I have returned, one late Sunday night, to present to you chapter 9, the third and final installment of the expedition!

Thank you very much to Amelia Mills and In The Mix for your lovely reviews!
Thanks as well to Smiley-sama, SweetDreamer215, Nythtak, Blue Nariko, Jenna A. L. Marie, dragonlover721, and imagination junkie for your favorites and alerts!

Please enjoy!
I disclaim, and own nothing.

A mere two months had passed since the expedition had taken the south fork, Lewis proclaimed that they had arrived at the west coast.

"See those mountains?" he asked, waving his arm in a sweeping gesture across the landscape at the peaks before them. "Just beyond them, we will find the vast expanse of the Pacific ocean, with a river flowing down from the mountains into the waters below, through vast plains of green! We'll be the first to reach this point by land! Doesn't it thrill you?"

Alfred agreed, saying it certainly did thrill him, but the doubtful glances Sacagawea kept giving Lewis made him rather uncertain.

It wasn't that he didn't want to be at the Pacific; in fact, he hoped they were there more than anything. The past two months had been rough going indeed. Shortly after choosing the south fork, they'd come upon a set of waterfalls that they had no choice but to carry the boat around. Carry. A boat. Full up with supplies and scientific specimens and maps. Alfred thanked Jefferson for sending so many men with them, or they certainly wouldn't have made it.

Lewis was still holding out for that elusive Northwest Passage, though Clark had confided in Alfred that he thought it was a load of drivel at this point. Particularly because this river had been their best hope, and a portage that took nearly a month to complete wasn't ideal for trading boats to pass.

If the exhausting boat-carrying hadn't been enough, they'd then found three more forks in the Missouri. Clark named them the Gallatin, the Madison, and the Jefferson, causing Alfred to sigh at the unoriginality of his monikers.

They'd chosen to follow the Jefferson (or rather, Lewis had arbitrarily decided), and had gotten their best news of the month when Sacagawea suddenly got very excited. It had taken Charbonneau's best efforts to translate her rapid speech into English, and it appeared that they'd reached what she called Beaverhead Rock, indicating that they were getting close to the headwaters of the Missouri, where the Shoshone lived.

That was where they were now, and Lewis, determined to be among the first to see the Pacific, decided to lead a scouting group ahead, composed of himself, Alfred, and two other soldiers. He'd wanted Clark to come along, but the older man had stayed behind, reminding Lewis that someone needed to stay behind to mind the boat. The responsible went unsaid.

Alfred sighed again as Lewis continued to go on about the ocean, seemingly intent on talking his ears off. This was certainly the most the man had ever said to him in one sitting. When the mountain became too steep for Lewis to do anything but focus on climbing, Alfred thanked whatever deity was out there for shutting him up.

As they neared the top, the atmosphere of the small group grew distinctly more anxious as they waited with something akin to baited breath (if they hadn't been panting from exertion) for the elusive Pacific to appear over the top of the mountain.

Lewis reached the top first. As Alfred came up behind him, he couldn't see the other man's face, but his silence definitely meant something. Either he was speechless in awe or…

"This is most inconvenient."

Alfred drew up beside the man, and followed Lewis's gaze. "Indeed it is."

Before them was not the blue of an ocean, with a river flowing into it, but yet another several rows of mountains.

Thinking back on it, that was the only time Alfred ever heard Lewis swear.

_V~-~-~V_

"Well, there's no point in going back just yet," Lewis said, gazing balefully at the mountains before them. "Why don't we look around for a bit?"

The soldiers didn't look too pleased with this idea of "looking around," but Lewis insisted, and where the commander went, they followed.

It wasn't long before their "looking around" developed into a search mission for things that Lewis decided they needed as his rant against the ocean's inconvenient placement developed into a monologue of complaints about nearly everything.

"… and if we're going to cross these damn mountains, we're going to need a great many horses, but of course we don't have any of those along, because this expedition is supposedly going by boat, not on foot, and none of us have the faintest clue how to get over the mountains anyway, and what if beyond them is just more mountains? What if those English sailors were lying when they said they discovered the western coast of this idiotically huge continent? I wouldn't put it past them, because they think they're the great British Empire, and just didn't want to admit that they couldn't sail there, because these mountains go all the way to India and there is no Pacific ocean—"

"Sir! There's an encampment up ahead!"

Alfred's gaze snapped to where the soldier was pointing, and sure enough, a few thin tendrils of smoke were twirling up into the sky. The man's expression was extremely relieved as he watched the smoke, for reasons Alfred could definitely understand. For Lewis, having been interrupted, finally was silent as he too trained his eyes on the certain signs of humanity.

"Indeed there is!" he declared. "Excellent eye, Jamison!"

"Should we approach them?" the other soldier ventured tentatively. "We don't know if they're hostile, and we don't have Charbonneau's wife with us…"

"We have Jones," Lewis said confidently, causing the other two to shoot confused glances in Alfred's direction.

"Glad to be of use," Alfred muttered. Then, more loudly, he asked, "Will we be getting horses, then? These people certainly should have some."

From the expression on Lewis's face, it was clear that he hadn't yet considered this possibility. "Of course we will! Make haste men, we've got to get there before nightfall!"

_V~-~-~V_

The encampment turned out to be home to one group of Shoshone, Sacagawea's people. Despite what, negotiations were not proceeding well at all.

The chief was a fairly young man named Cameahwait. No older than his mid-twenties, his age surprised Alfred. Normally, it was the elders who led the village. He supposed the former chief had died young, leaving his son to run the tribe despite his age. It seemed to be quite the burden, if the stony look in his dark eyes was any indication.

"What do you mean, they won't give us any horses?" Lewis hissed. "We've promised goods and everything!"

"Well, the goods aren't anywhere in sight," Alfred said, rather irritated at the commander. He'd been taking his anger out on Alfred due to his own inability to communicate with the tribe. "And how do they know we aren't just going to run off with nearly thirty of their horses and not pay them? Or what if the payment we have to offer isn't good enough? They don't trust white men like that!"

Lewis huffed. "Well, they should. We're a scientific expedition, not a bunch of thieves."

"But they don't know that!" Alfred glanced back at the young chief, who was watching the pair with a suspicious gaze, looking increasingly less likely to make any sort of deal.

Sorry, he signed. Can we return with our small tribe, and gifts, to give for horses?

The chief leveled Alfred with a slightly less intimidating look. Perhaps it was because Alfred could speak with him that he seemed to respect him a bit more. Then Cameahwait turned and said something to the guards behind him, who seemed to respond rather worriedly. Looking back at Alfred, Cameahwait signed, I go with you to small tribe.

Startled, Alfred translated. "He wants to come with us, to where the rest of the expedition is.

"Will he give us horses then?" Lewis asked.

"He will." Alfred worried a bit about the lie, and hoped that that was the reason the young chief had decided to come with them: a gesture of benevolence. Judging by his eyes, it wasn't, but Alfred held out hope.

The walk back across the pass to the expedition's camp was a tense one. Cameahwait did seem a bit unsure of himself, trying to follow at the same time as trying to lead, because he was the chief after all. The small Shoshone group also eyed the noisy white men with distaste as they clomped through the underbrush, a stark comparison to their own silent steps.

Alfred was relieved when the tents finally came into view. A cry rang out from the soldier on lookout, and soon enough, a majority of the men were waiting as the little advanced-scouting-turned-diplomacy-committee returned.

Clark, in front, was the first to ask a coherent question. "Is the ocean close?"

Lewis scowled. "No, it isn't. There seem to be many more mountains between here and the Pacific." He lapsed again into angry mutterings, but Clark's attention was diverted to the small band behind them.

"And who might they be?" he asked, addressing no one in particular. Alfred was about to respond when he heard a gasp from the crowd. The soldiers turned toward the source, and Alfred was somehow unsurprised to see a wide-eyed Sacagawea. Be as that may, he was surprised by her next words.

"Brother!"

_V~-~-~V_

Lewis had been miffed, Clark had laughed, and Alfred had been rather confused until he could manage to get an understandable explanation from Sacagawea. It appeared that Cameahwait was her brother, and she hadn't seen him since before her kidnapping from the camp by the Hidatsa. The young chief had also gone from cold and stony to very welcoming of the expedition, and quite willing to give them a few horses, and a guide to boot.

In the end, they got twenty-nine horses and a mule, as well as an aging fellow they nicknamed Old Toby to lead them safely across the mountains. Much to Lewis's dismay, Toby informed them that there was another range of mountains beyond these immediate ones, and after those they would find the ocean.

It was with many tears on Sacagawea's part and promises to return that Cameahwait and the Shoshones bid the expedition goodbye. And that was the last time any of them saw civilization for a long while.

The cold was bitter, Alfred knew. Valley Forge had been bad, the worst kind of cold that froze your hair and left dustings of frost on your icy blue fingers. But the mountains, he decided were almost as bad.

The wind chilled them to the bone, and despite the fact that he knew it was only September, the air on the peaks gave the illusion of a mid-December gale and gave him cause to doubt their calendar.

Food was also increasingly scarce. There was no fresh game in the mountains, no abundant rabbits or deer like on the plains. Instead, burrowing rodents provided sustenance as their supplies dwindled to nearly nothing. And these soldiers, having never needed to survive on next to nothing, could barely walk in a straight line. Because they were walking, of course. Horses were for carrying their things, leaving the boat near the Shoshone camp empty.

For the first time in his life, Alfred was grateful for his apparent inability to die. He could count his ribs more easily than ever before, he could practically feel the bones in his joints poking out, and he made sure to eat less than anyone else (generally saving his rations for Sacagawea and little Jean), yet he still seemed to have more energy than the entire expedition combined (save Old Toby, who managed to look just fine. He was probably used to it).

On September 22nd, 1805, the group emerged from the mountains, spent and near starvation, hoping beyond hope that the next stretch of the journey would be easier.

"Have you ever crossed those before?" Alfred asked Sacagawea as they made their camp. She shook her head. She too looked frailer than before, though he knew many of the soldiers had tried to be gentlemanly by giving her extra food. She bounced little Jean on her hip and said,

"I have not, but Brother says he once did, when he was small. Shoshone are better at long walks than white men."

Alfred nodded in reply. "That's probably true."

The expedition continued moving west, lacking its earlier fervor thanks to their close brush with death. The general attitude perked up a bit when they arrived at the Colombia River almost a month later, but without a boat, they still walked.

But one day, they arrived at the top of a ridge, overlooking a vast empty expanse before yet another set of mountains. Lewis groaned, but Clark looked elated.

"Are you mad?" Lewis had asked in response to Clark's grin.

"Not at all, Lewis, my good man," he replied, clapping his friend on the back. "Don't you see that peak?"

"I see a lot of peaks," Lewis growled, "be a bit more specific."

Clark pointed excitedly. "That one there! Surely, that's Mount Hood!"

Lewis's eyes widened, but the rest of the expedition was still rather confused. "So those British weren't lying after all," he muttered.

"Lying about what?" Alfred asked, observing the mountain with equal confusion. Sure, it was incredibly large, topped with snow to boot, and its craggy face was quite impressive for a mountain, but Alfred wasn't really in the mood to be impressed by any mountain ever again. In fact, he probably would be happy to never have to see a mountain again, a sentiment that he felt was shared. But Clark seemed to be thrilled to see this one in particular.

"In 1792, the British captain who claimed to have sailed up the Pacific coast of the American continent, documented an unusually large mountain a ways inland, which he named Mt. Hood," Clark explained, "and that mountain there fits his description unusually well to be a mere coincidence."

"Which means," Lewis interjected, his eyes lighting up for the first time since their previous false alarm, "we're finally near the ocean!"

_V~-~-~V_

It was two weeks later when Clark proclaimed he could see the ocean. Standing atop a bluff, he was convinced that between the hills ahead, one could make out the blue of water, a different shade than the blue of the sky above. He left his journal out, bookmarked to that day's page. Picking it up to return to the man, Alfred flipped it open, and read Clark's messy scrawl, proclaiming,

Ocian in view! O! the joy.

Alfred snorted. Whatever hope he'd had that Clark's journals would actually be understood years from then diminished at the sight of his atrocious spelling. No wonder he never let anybody near his books.

But the nearer they got to the elusive speck of blue, the grayer the sky above grew. Lewis was furious at such a setback, but the ensuing storms forced the expedition to stay in one spot for nearly three weeks, just a bit away from the banks of the Colombia.

Most of the men passed the time playing poker, but Alfred wasn't bored enough to risk joining them again and suffering further humiliation. Instead, he had the occasional chat with Sacagawea. He taught her some English, and she told him more stories in return. He sometimes wondered if she was really telling little Jean, because he knew of her fear that he would grow up too much like the white men, but never asked.

"What does the ocean look like?"

Alfred looked up from cleaning his boots, a habit of boredom leftover from the Revolution. He hm'd, pondering the question for a moment.

"You've never seen it, have you?" he asked, already knowing the answer to his question. "Well… it's sort of like a big lake, I suppose, a really, really big lake that goes all the way to the horizon and all the way north and south. And it's got waves too, which are like… like when you throw a stone into a pond, and all those ripples come to shore, except larger. And sometimes, there will be beaches, which are long strips of sand right next to the water."

Sacagawea nodded, looking thoughtful, but still rather confused. "But lakes have shores on all sides. Does the ocean?"

"No… the ocean goes a long way."

"Then you would fall off, if you went to the end?"

Alfred shook his head. "I'm really doing a poor job explaining this… the world is round, see? So you won't fall off."

Sacagawea looked even more confused. "The land is flat."

"No, it's actually round." Looking around, Alfred pointed to Sacagawea's necklace. "See, imagine if the world was like that bead. It's round, but we're all so small on its surface that we don't notice from where we're standing that it actually bends."

She looked a little less confused. "But you say the ocean does not have shores on all sides, so it must end."

"There's not shores, I don't think, because you can go around the land from one ocean to another in big ships. So really it's the land that ends, and the ocean goes around that."

Suddenly, Alfred remembered that sunny day in Boston, when he'd first met the strange diplomat, Arthur. Yes, I like the ships as well, and the sea. Sometimes it seems like the only thing that's the same between here and England.

"The same thing, huh?"

"Hm?"

Alfred glanced at Sacagawea, who was looking at him strangely. "A friend of mine once said that the ocean was the only thing that was the same between here and his home. That was why he liked it so much." Never mind that Alfred wouldn't really describe Arthur as a friend, seeing as their last encounter had ended with him almost getting stabbed…

"So the ocean can connect people from different homes?"

"Something like that," Alfred replied. Sacagawea looked rather wistful.

"I hope we see it soon."

As soon as the storms ended, Lewis had rushed the men to pack up camp and get moving. As they crossed the final hill, he'd let out a very childish cheer and had promptly started shaking hands with everyone in the expedition, babbling all the while about how beautiful the ocean was.

Sacagawea stood with Arthur, Jean in her arms, and gazed out over the expanse of blue before them, smiling faintly. Alfred was yet again struck by how much she looked like Nek, her black hair fluttering faintly in the salty breeze.

He looked out with her, wondering if Nek had ever stood near this very spot, gazing at the ocean that marked the edge of the People's land and thinking of what lay beyond. He wondered if Arthur had been on one of those British ships that had named Mt Hood, and if he had stood on a deck out in that water, thinking of the same thing.

The air was deliciously warm for October, just as Nek had said it would be. The sound of soldiers laughing and rejoicing at the end of their journey faded into the background as Alfred caught the cry of a gull and the distant crash of waves, reminding him of exactly why he'd spent his afternoons on the piers of Boston.

And he smiled, wondering why he'd never realized before just how truly beautiful the sea was before.

V/~-~-~\V

Wow. Writing this expedition took way longer than I thought it would. I did enjoy writing Sacagawea, though, so I'll miss her next chapter.
Prepare yourselves for the War of 1812, and hopefully more country cameos!

Once again, historical events are followed as closely as possible. Cameahwait was Sacagawea's brother (or possibly cousin, because the two words are the same in the Shoshone language), Old Toby did exist, they did have a false alarm, and Clark's horrid spelling is word-for-word from his most famous journal entry. I'm very thankful to those of you who have reacted so positively to the historical aspect of this fic, as I spend a lot of time researching for it, and hope to maintain the accuracy!

Thank you for reading, and as usual, if you have time, don't hesitate to comment or review! I hope you enjoyed this chapter!